Verlan: French slang that inverses words | Hacker News Reader

Verlan: French slang that inverses words

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178 pointsjanpot240 comments

Another pecularity of French is the tendency to supercomposition.

Like the expression au jour d'aujourd'hui which means "the day of today", however, aujourd'hui itself mean "the day of today", because hui is the Old French word for "today" and aujourd' is obviously the concatenated form of "au jour de".

But it does not end there: the Old French word hui evolved from "hoc diem", which means "this day" in Latin.

At the end, the best explanation of au jour d'aujourd'hui is

    (the-day-of
       (the-day-of 
         (this (day)))

which is fascinating.

I believe it's because people don't realize that "Aujourd'hui" originally meant "the day of today".

Even though you hear people say "au jour d'aujourd'hui" it's considered incorrect and should be avoided [1]. It's better to say "A ce jour".

[1] https://www.lefigaro.fr/langue-francaise/expressions-francai...

Give this expression another hundred years, and it will become a common word.

In a shortened form.

But it won't enter the dictionary before additionally passing through verlan recomposition at least once.

Joursa?

I was secretly hoping for jours-au-au.

This is bad french used by clueless journalists. It's not fascinating but just degrading. French get their language botched by useless repetitions.

Il est tout à fait regrettable d'oublier non seulement la répétition comme outil de communication mais aussi de l'employer de travers à des heures de grande écoute.

This rampant prescriptivism among us frenchies is really tiring after a while. I blame the Académie. Modern French is botched Middle French which is botched Old French which is botched Vulgar Latin which is botched Classical Latin (this last one is a bit incorrect but you get the idea). "Aujourd'hui"'s ethymology is a proof of that.

I agree that repetition for emphasis is an innovation of modern French though. English for instance would never ever do something like that. That would be completely, entirely, absolutely preposterous. I myself wouldn't stand for it.

> This rampant prescriptivism among us frenchies is really tiring after a while

I dislike "Au jour d'aujourd'hui" because of the redundancy. There are shorter and more elegant ways to say the exact same thing. I don't know if we can talk about prescriptivism in that case. It just gives a negative impression on the author (like when you see an anti-pattern in computer code).

> English for instance would never ever do something like that

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregardless

Or one that absolutely drives me nuts:

"A great rate of speed"

Which is a journalist way to say "I failed high school physics, but I'm still going to try to sound smart".

My favorite is still "laxadaisical" for those situations when neither "lax" nor "lackadaisical" are enough.

Or exonerative tense:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/past_exonerative

In which journalists use the passive voice to excuse, e.g., police shootings. "The victim was shot and killed in an officer-involved shooting." Rather than: "the officer shot and killed the victim."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/07/14/...

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/washington/14mistakes.htm...

> This rampant prescriptivism

really threw me off when learning French. I went from the mostly benign and spelling-only prescriptivism of Spanish to the complete and utter anarchy that is English to this weird situation French is in where it's the worst of both worlds: it has all of the rules and all of the exceptions.

In some situations following all of the rules ('course a pied' over 'running' type stuff) will make you positively odd, and in others ignoring some specific rules makes you sound uncultured.

Au jour du jour d'aujourd'hui, I beg to differ.

The day than never ends.

Au jour d'ajourd'hui would make a funny translation of "Groundhog day". So far, the French translated this film as https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_jour_sans_fin which is stupid, because it reveals the plot.

They could have called it "Chandeleur" instead...

Which happens to be today (aujourd'hui) ;-)

Does it reveal the plot? To me "un jour sans fin" seems like it could just be figurative, like a day that seems to never end because it's boring or miserable... which is kind of what Bill Murray's life is like at the beginning of the movie.

> au jour d'aujourd'hui

This is typically known, even among french people, to be extremely bad french, so it is pretty much only used by ignorant journalists.

And politicians who heavily used this expression for two or three years. That trend is now gone.

Pet peeve of mine, there also was the word "sociétal" used instead of "social". Which led me to use the locution "les réseaux sociétaux" because fuck.

On that particular topic, I definitely recommend reading François Héran's 1991 article "Pour en finir avec « sociétal »" [1].

[1] https://www.persee.fr/doc/rfsoc_0035-2969_1991_num_32_4_4079

Thanks, that made my day :).

Sociétal is mostly about values and social is about the community.

Hence why we say sécurité sociale et non sécurité sociétale.

When you create words that don't exist you can put any meaning behind them I guess.

I didn't know I was old already at 37, but when I was young, the word societal was not even related to social: literally pertains to society, which without further qualification is the general group of "all of us" — whereas e.g. the "Audio Engineer Society" is the group of that field.

Society is opposed to private, fragmented circles ("some" audio engineers, "some" people), subset communities contained in society. Externally, society as opposed to other societies i.e. countries or cultures.

Then one day some r/Iamverysmart self-proclaimed intellectual heard "societal" and liked the word, emotionally, and began using it — that's how you learn words, right? By using them. Trial and error.

So, so many errors.

But others liked it too. And ever more. Lovely errors. And suddenly because people confused it with "social", it began an "umbrella concept" for "everything involving many people doing stuff together". Sure, that works for society and social matters. It's also as empty a concept as you can make. But in the Twitter age, it's OK to use 1 word to mean 20 things and never detailing any of it,

because fuck.

Agreed.

The truth is so few people care, it's not even worth the time to delete -et-. Those who do care, speak with others who understand, and ignore the rest. Sad state of affairs, but I've grown convinced it's just human nature, and has been virtually forever.

<sarcasm>That's exactly what the populace was saying in Middle Ages, when the word aujourd'hui was a novelty.</sarcasm>

I would consider it an awkward and redundant turn of phrase but not "extremely bad french". It's on the same level as "monter en haut" (to <go up> up) or "descendre en bas" (go <go-down> down).

Wiktionary[1] says that the expression has existed at least since the 18th century, adding this interesting note:

> À noter aussi que durant ce siècle, la notion de « lumière » était une représentation métaphorique de la « connaissance » (cf. : siècle des lumières). Cette expression peut donc aussi se traduire de la façon suivante : « à la connaissance d’aujourd’hui » ou « au savoir d’aujourd’hui ».

Roughly translated it says that light could be used metaphorically to imply knowledge, so "au jour d'aujourd'hui" could be parsed like "to the light of today" and from there "to the knowledge of today". Now whether that's a justification after the fact or the real origin of the expression, who knows...

[1] https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/au_jour_d%E2%80%99aujourd%E2%...

Isn't "descendre en bas" just "to descend down"?

I imagine it’s redundant because down is the only way you can descend.

Yes, I mean that's a more accurate translation that carries the redundancy better.

I considered it but I thought that "to descend" was too rare and formal in English to really carry over how the phrase truly feels in French. "I descend down" decidedly feels much more awkward than "je descend en bas" to me, if only because I've heard the latter a lot and the former probably never.

"I climb up" might give a somewhat better impression of how "je monte en haut" sounds in French, although I suppose that you can very much "climb down" in English so it's not a perfect match.

Ah, I see, and both "climb up" and "climb down" are used, so it's not equivalent, you're right.

It's idiomatic to say "I rise up" or "I raise X up" in English, which are analogous though not translations. English just loves prepositional verbs.

unless you're trapped in some escherian[1] world?

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._C._Escher

Sure, although to descend feels a lot more formal than descendre does in French.

Yes but “descendre” and “monter” can mean other things in other contexts. So I feel the redundancy is from poor translation.

Exactly! Translation is tricky business.

I missed something, where does "light" come from? How did we get from "jour d'aujourd'hui" to "connaisance d'aujourd'hui" - where's the intermediate "lumière d'aujourd'hui"?

"Jour" is polysemic, it literally means "day", but metaphorically it also means "light". For instance, "voir quelque chose sous un nouveau jour" means "to see something under a new light", rather than "a new day".

> It's on the same level as "monter en haut" (to <go up> up) or "descendre en bas" (go <go-down> down).

The same thing happens in Spanish ("subir arriba" and "bajar abajo"). It became a serious pet peeve after someone pointed it out to me, until I noticed that people only make this "mistake" in either very noisy places or very time-sensitive situations. It's more a desired redundancy (even if not conscious) than the accidental redundancy in the case of au jour d'aujourd'hui.

Writing about this reminded me of how some people will try and make conlangs that compress as much information into as few sounds as possible, only to render them unusable - whereas within a rounding error all natural languages have the exact same information density and Signal To Noise ratio.

Edits: grammar, formatting.

I take "aujourd'hui" to mean "today" and "au jour d'aujourd'hui" to mean "to this day", which is not the same.

aujourd'hui = today

jusqu'a maintenant = to this day

au jour d'aujourd'hui is just too awkward to use, it even sounds bad.

I understand it to be slightly different, but I am not trying to argue for its use.

Sort of like the English phrase "in a few moments from now", also beloved of broadcasters.

Came here to say that, thank you mon bon ami !

> extremely bad french, so it is pretty much only used by ignorant journalists

I wouldn't say that, it's still debated whether it's correct or not.

That seems similar to the way people say PIN number even though PIN itself means personal identification number. I don't know if au jour d'aujourd'hui sounds horribly redundant in French, but I find that PIN number is perfectly acceptable in English, along with SSN number, UPC code, and many others. It takes mental energy to decompose PIN into its components and realize it contains the word "number", so I welcome the redundancy.

When someone asks, "Do you remember your PIN?", I'm thinking about sewing needles or medallions for a second -- if they didn't add the word "number". On the other hand, the acronym ATM is so common that I don't feel the need to say "ATM machine" anymore; I'll say "Where's the nearest ATM?" and expect that most people will immediately understand it without having to think about what it stands for.

back to french you have the reflective verb "s'[en] foutre" (not to give a shit about [it]), which you use "je m'en fous" = i don't care, "tu t'en fous" = you don't care...

you can acronym "on s'en fout" as osef for a general "no one cares" and then rebuild osef as a verb : "je m'osef", "tu t'osef" etc...

No one says "je m'osef".. :roll_eyes:

Never heard "je m'osef" in my whole life :)

"Je m'en zef" is a more popular way of saying so (even if 'zef' is mostly used for slang on other contexts)

>reflective

reflexive

This is known as PNS Syndrome.

Hopefully it won’t grow into eTLA acronym.

RAS (Redundant Acronym Syndrome) syndrome: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome

Pin and P.I.N. (spelled out) are two different words in reality.

That's fine if you're chatting via a written medium. I think the point the GP was making was when it's used in spoken language.

Where does pin the word come from in this context?

JFYI:

http://www.acronympolice.org/

http://www.acronympolice.org/?page_id=90

>3.2 Multiple Repeat Violations: A section 3 paragraph 2 offence occurs when multiple redundant acronyms are used in the course of a conversation. An example of a section 3 paragraph 2 violation would be “Honey, what is your PIN number, I need to take some money out of the ATM machine. If I have to go into the bank, they are going to ask for my SSN number and I can’t remember it”.

It might not help that "PIN" sounds exactly like of of the numerous slang synonyms for... well, just ask any French guy ;)

Then again, if your usual corner distributeur is asking you for this other PIN, authentication methods have certainly gotten a lot more creative!

> I don't know if au jour d'aujourd'hui sounds horribly redundant in French

No, we use it to emphasize that what we're talking about is as of today, but we can't make projections on the future.

You would use it in a sentence like : au jour d'aujourd'hui there are 'only' 300 deaths from the Chinese virus (implying that you don't know if it's going to get much worse or not).

Agree. It’s like a bad translation of “as of today”. It is kind of ugly though and to me it sounds awful, especially when you consider that you can replace it by the much more simple and elegant “à ce jour”.

“Au jour d'aujourd'hui” is most definitely bad grammar, or at bad least style, and thus I'm pretty sure it's wrong in the eyes of linguists, the Académie Française, etc.

But I'm sure the French are not the only ones to elevate some bad grammar/style to a level of consensus. Proof that languages are living things!

> I don't know if au jour d'aujourd'hui sounds horribly redundant in French

It varies from community to community. Some say it all the time, others laugh as soon as someone says it, and everything in between.

> I don't know if au jour d'aujourd'hui sounds horribly redundant in French

To me it does, it's irritating, like "to go up upstairs" (“monter en haut”). But most people evidently don't care, journalists do it all the time now.

I think it comes down to familiarity with expressions (or acronyms), as you explain. The more you internalize what a conjugate thing is, the more it becomes its own — and grammar be damned on the way, as logic evidently isn't the only path to understanding/speaking (perhaps not even the most common).

I really don’t like the example of “monter en haut”. Certain verbs, like “monter” can have very different meanings without the noun.

Monter en haut: to go up (not specifically stairs, contextually maybe, could just as well be an elevator or a tree house ladder for example)

Monter a cheval: to get on a horses back

Monter un meuble: to assemble furniture (think ikea)

The noun here is not irritating, it’s essential.

I agree with the sentiment, but it's logically redundant since you cannot possibly “monter en bas”, so you should really just say “je monte”. In context, everybody knows if you're talking about the elevator or a horse (right?), and otherwise you may specify. And you're likely to add something, like “je monte chercher blabla” or “elle est montée depuis une heure”, which usually removes ambiguity.

Also, there are proper ways to say “monter en haut”! — monter à l'étage, monter l'escalier, monter dans sa chambre, etc.

Speaking of which, I find that it's particularly important to speak properly around kids, it reinforces good logic, thoroughness I think. My parents were like that, I've always been like that, and I guess I'll do the same to my kids, haha.

> otherwise you may specify

thanks your majesty, queen of fuckin england was it, yea?

> That seems similar to the way people say PIN number even though PIN itself means personal identification number.

At least in Germany/German language, if you use such a redundant wording, you are often considered to be not very knowledgeable. In the 90s, some people even loved to point out that SMS is the name of the service - the message is an SM (oh, the funny puns that can be constructed from this fact).

TTL logic

What's wrong with PINumber?

It's not like "RIP in peace"

Not used by French, don't believe Wikipedia :)

It's among the jokes of uneducated French supposedly using "comme même" (like though) instead of "quand même" (even though).

The word meuf is not used? It's very common...

It was about "au jour d'aujourd'hui", where the correct the version could be "à ce jour" :)

meuf is indeed very much used but not very elegant. More gopnik/low-class style :)

It is not used in everyday language, but it's used by journalists and PR.

"Au jour d'aujourd'hui" is used to emphasize the "up to now" quality, kind of like "as of now".

"Comme même" is just a spelling mistake. Kind of similar to "he is better then that".

I'm a native french speaker and only recently realized that "Qu'est-ce que c'est ?" ("what is it ?") literally translates to "what is it that it is ?".

You can just say « Qu’est-ce ? » as well which is literally "what is it" ;) (written form rather than colloquial)

You could, and it would be correct. But few would understand at first. It sounds like "caisse", like in "caisse de vin" (crate of wine).

It could also be used by an "homme de lettre" in a very pompous way.

It's much more understandable if you add "donc" after "Qu'est ce". I don't really know why, it just adds extra weirdness :)

Can you say "Quoi est-ce?" and avoid that ambiguity (and correspondingly, "Qui est-ce?")? Or would that be wrong?

You can't, the "liaison" is mandatory between "quoi" and "est".

"Qui est-ce ?" is correct. "Quoi est-ce ?" is not. "Quand est-ce" and "Où est-ce" work. "Comment est-ce ?" doesn't really work by itself but could work with something after it, like "Comment est ce film ?".

All of these work and sound more natural in spoken language if you flip and say C'est quoi ? C'est qui ? C'est quand ? etc.

And the famous "Qu'est-ce que c'est que cette chose là ?", meaning "what is this thing", but literally "what is this that this is that this thing there?"

I'm a little confused, why is the second "que" there? Why can't it just be "Qu'est-ce que c'est cette chose-là?"? (I'd expect it to be the equivalent of "What is it that it's that thing there?")

It's decorative, it has no meaning.

Similarly you have "les choses que l'on voit" and "les choses qu'on voit" with the "l'" being there for prettyness.

Oh huh, merci!

As a French-3rd-language learner (first English, then a little Spanish) I was (and am still) really confused about why "qu'est-ce que" is a thing. Spanish doesn't do that, at least as far as I recall. In many respects the languages have similar vocabulary (at least, coming from an English-speaking perspective).

It feels like some Germans invaded over the border and brought some compound word rules.

is backward slang common over there ?

I have long had a suspicion that the Afrikaans use of two negative words is due to the French influence. I might be completely wrong, but the ne ... pas construction is the only one in any language that influenced Southern Africa that comes close to the nie ... nie construction in Afrikaans. What is the reason for the French ne ... pas to start off with?

By comparison, in an English negation you would just have not without any supporting word at the end.

I once heard that this used to be a way to emphasize, by adding the thing you do not do. Not very clear, bit here are some examples:

- je ne marche _pas_ (I not not walk _any step_)

- je ne me bat _guerre_ (I do not fight _any war_)

- je ne coud _point_ (I do not sew _any point_)

And then slowly disconnected. All those words are still used as negations, and I cannot think of any word of negation that cannot be interpreted this way, so that might be true (but I cannot really think of more than those 3 either). What makes me doubt is what words would have persisted (why _ step_ as the one most common?)

This phenomenon is called a "Jespersen's cycle" according to Wiktionary.

https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/cycle_de_Jespersen

Also according to Wiktionary, "guère" is unrelated to "guerre" (war) and "ne ... guère" is therefore not the product of a Jespersen's cycle.

https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/gu%C3%A8re

> je ne marche _pas_ (I not not walk _any step_)

It merely means I do not walk. There's no particular connotation. It has absolutely nothing to do with pas as in a step.

> - je ne me bat _guerre_ (I do not fight _any war_)

Je ne me bat guère means "I hardly fight". No relation to war.

> - je ne coud _point_ (I do not sew _any point_)

Je ne couds point means "I don't sew". Again, no particular connotation. Point means the same as pas in this case and has nothing to do whatsoever with stitches.

> It has absolutely nothing to do with pas as in a step.

"Pas" as in the negation originally came from "pas" as in a step, through expressions like "I will not walk another step".

You're mentioning the current, disconnected meaning, while the original author showed a possible origin of those expressions. I dont know if they're valid but they're certainly interesting and potentially right.

> - je ne me bat _guerre_ (I do not fight _any war_)

This is not 'guerre' here but 'guère', which is a homonym but has no relation to 'guerre' (war). 'Guère' comes from an old French word that means 'a lot'.

Taking this into account it is clearer that "je ne me bat guère" means "I don't fight much"/"I hardly fight".

You could have picked any verb instead of 'to fight'. I suspect your other examples are equally contrived.

When speaking or even writing non formally, the "ne" are sometimes dropped. It's incorrect of course but perfectly understandable most of the time (dropping the "pas" instead is really weird but still understandable). My uninformed opinion is that this must just be a redundancy, which helps makes sure the negation is well heard, since missing it is generally catastrophic for the meaning as it generally means the opposite. Actually, in English negation can also add 2 words (do not), which also helps hearing it IMO. It also tends to be contacted. BTW I always have a problem with can vs can't, and often have to ask which one it is :)

Unintuitively, informal speaking often skips the ne but the pas is mandatory.

Je mange pas ça - I don’t eat this.

Also the second part can add nuance to the negation, fe.

Je ne mange plus ça - I don’t eat this anymore.

*Not a native speaker so there’s definitely more to it than I know.

In Spanish, if you ask "where from?" you'd say "¿De dónde?", which is also a triple composition.

The adverb "dónde" already has the preposition "de" embeded in it, as it comes from a condensation of Vulgar Latin "de unde", already meaning "from where". But Latin "unde" already is a composed form meaning "from where", and where the "-de" ending is not the preposition "de" but it's still a particle making "unde" a composed form...

So if you're Spanish and ask "¿De dónde?" you're asking

¿(from (from (where from)))?

> But it does not end there: the Old French word hui evolved from "hoc diem", which means "this day" in Latin.

It doesn't. Try to explain without handwaving. You can't. The so called experts you are parroting don't actually know. Bet you didn't even know.

It obviously means the day of he', here, the hey day.

> hui evolved from "hoc diem"

that's the mos'stu'ing I ever heard.

A bit tangential but closely related, I believe French HipHop / Rap makes such a good use of our language and all the slangs which I find lacking a bit in English HipHop.

I don't know if it's cultural or if I am really unaware of the equivalent in English, but it is such a delight to see the creativity of those folks.

A few recent examples :

https://genius.com/15760906 < Cadillac | Game over : A song about death.

"J'écoute des CDs, des sons de l'au-delà" > I listen to records (CD), sounds from the other side. Des CDs also sound like being dead (décédé).

https://genius.com/Odezenne-tu-pu-du-cu-lyrics < Odezenne | Tu pu du cu

"T’es stupéfiant \ Je te roule, je te fume \ T’es stupéfait" > Word play on stupéfiant which is both a word for drugs and being surprising / stunning.

https://genius.com/Nekfeu-egerie-lyrics < Nekfeu | Egérie

"Toujours en déplacement le soir \ Mais, c'qui compte, c'est le dépassement de soi" > The play on déplacemment (being out of town) / dépassement (overcoming) ... le soir / de soi. Brilliant

Relatedly, but further away from OP, and.not rap/hip hop, but Frandol's "l'un contre l'autre" makes a very good use of double entendre. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BNdxHUv3vmc

I'm not sure if this is what you meant but there's a ton of word play in American Hip-Hop, it's pretty core to the genre. Literally any rapper you pick will be doing some amount of word play.

Oh I am sure there are word plays in American / English speaking HipHop, I just haven't found the same propensity than in the French scene.

If you have notable examples in mind, please do share with me because I have been trying to find that for a while to prove my own point wrong.

Sure I think MF DOOM is a good place to start especially his Madvillainy album with the producer Madlib which is really well regarded. More recent stuff I enjoy is Mick Jenkins from Chicago, his 2014 The Waters mixtape was also really well reviewed. Aesop Rock is also generally thought of as a really good technical rapper. His album None Shall Pass from the Def Jux days is really good though I prefer Skelethon which has less word play but is also brilliant.

Listen to Jay Z - Reasonable Doubt.

Hey, thanks for spreading Mc Solaar :) Great author indeed

Yea, this is extremely common in American hip hop for a long time, and some of the turns are also quite breathtaking. Glad to see it in French too

I can't edit my original comment anymore but if you do have an interest in French, I strongly recommend studying the first 2 examples because they are pretty much full of those carefully crafted punchlines.

A bit older but very much a classic too, https://genius.com/Mc-solaar-caroline-lyrics

Sometimes "verlan" words come into general use, and then get reversed again. e.g the original french word "femme" (woman) is "meuf" in verlan, but as "meuf" has mecome mainstream some people has started to say "feumeu" which is close to "femme" but pronounced differently.

As a French educated non-French, I must say: you've gotta love the French <3 :)

Another widely used one being “arabe” which became “rebeu” and then “beur”. Hence the “black-blanc-beur” generation of the 98 French World Cup.

It’s beur THEN rebeu but yep you got the spirit.

You'll also hear frequently "rabza" for "les arabes".

The liaison between the "s" and "a", prononced "za", is incorporated in into the next word before it is inverted.

Beur came before Rebeu...

> e.g the original french word "femme" (woman) is "meuf" in verlan, but as "meuf" has mecome mainstream some people has started to say "feumeu" which is close to "femme" but pronounced differently.

This makes me very curious -- why does the original vowel of "femme" get changed in the first inversion to "meuf"? Why does the inversion of "meuf" have an extra syllable? Is "feumme" not a possible word?

The article describes this process, but the vowel isn't changed, it's dropped, because it's now at the end of the verlanized word. Eu is added because thats the sound to add when there is no other vowel, as in a one syllable word.

While "feumme" is possible I think it would have gotten too close to the original "femme" word pronunciation-wise (which is a very common word itself), which isn't what you want when you're looking for something that differentiates your speech from others.

I think that many people don't even know that "meuf" is verlan for "femme" (or "keuf" for flic). At least, I didn't know when I was a kid. It got engrained in the language and people decided to "verlan"-ize it again. Because "meuf" ends with a consonant, you need to add an extra vowel "eu" to make the process work. You end up with "meufeu" which reverses to "feumeu".

In English we are really familiar with wildly varying vowel sounds.

Is French similar to Spanish? A change in vowel often completely changes the word and makes it incomprehensible.

Aside: if your mother tongue is English and you want to speak to a person whose native tongue is Spanish, concentrate very hard on the correct vowel sounds when speaking Spanish. Vowel fluidity is ingrained into English (especially between dialects), but vowel constancy is ingrained into Spanish (even across countries). If you are speaking English words to a Spanish listener, you can help them by speaking the words with transliterated Spanish vowel sounds from the written words. This is especially useful for the names of celebrities or place names e.g. Michael Jackson is said differently in Spanish. Also Sir Francis Drake is literally Pirate Drake in Spanish.

There's often a final "e" in French, which is then changed to "eu" after the word gets reversed (and then often truncated). Another example is "herbe" (literally "grass" but now more often used for cannabis) which becomes "beuher" then "beuh"). As the final "e" is often mute, this process is then generalized even to words where it's not there. As a widely used example, a "flic" (slang for a "cop") becomes a "keufli" then a "keuf".

Oh gosh I've been using some of these words without even realising they were shortened verlan.

I'll add the two I had to have explained to me:

chèm <- moche (ugly), not to be confused with chanmé <- méchant (bad) (think bad motherfucker), whose ending can't affort to drop.

reuch <- cher (expensive), not to be understood as an anglicism for "rush".

> chèm <- moche (ugly)

You'd write it cheum (moche => cheu-mo => cheum')

I've only ever heard is as chèm, so that's how I'd write it.

Sorry, I meant "it's written cheum"

See https://genius.com/Nekfeu-cheum-lyrics

Also "reubeu": it's "arabe" becoming "beura" in verlan, shortened to "beur", then reversed again to "reubeu".

there is also something funny: beurette, which is a feminization of beur, didn't have any particular meaning in the 90's but became very perogative in the 10's meaning a girl that want to show off but is not interesting. Oh, and it's now use without regard to race.

Putain j'aurais jamais su. Thanks HN

I knew what "keuf" meant, but never how it got constructed. I learned the word because of an MC Solaar lyric... "Qui vole un oeuf, vole un boeuf. Qui viole une meuf se fait serrer par les keufs."

"meuf" was obvious to me but "keuf" never was.

So thank you! You've answered something I was wondering about for more than 20 years now.

You're welcome. I give back to HN what HN gave to me (obscure knowledge).

In verlan you can ommit the last vowel or leave it. Most of the times it’s omitted. Here’s another example with « flic » (policeman): Flic -> keufli -> keuf Or with metro (underground): Métro -> tromé -> trom

There was a video in the late 90s of a young guy from parisian suburbs talking about how Verlan (the language of his generation) jumped the shark.

His quote was something like:

   > First we started with 'arrete ca' (stop it), 
   > then 'te-arr ac', then one guy's gonna say 'te' ..
   > surely one day it's gonna be 'et'. 
   > I swear, if someone says 'et' to me, 
   > I'll grab his collar and yell 'ARRETE CA' immediately.

I found the rare distance over its own generation priceless.

We argentinians do this a lot. Guess we inherited it from the French (There were big waves of immigration in the 2nd half of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th from all over Europe).

There are a lot of examples of this in tango lyrics, that are also rather complex to decipher because they are "lunfardo" (local slang) words.

A few examples:

Lleca: calle (street) Jermu: Mujer (woman) Goman: Mango ("No tengo un goman", "I have no money left". "mango" is slang for money. No idea of it's origins.

then there's "ortiba" that is a prime example of the transformation of meaning. It originates in the word "batidor" (whisk) that is a slang word for snitch. But then it transformed to indicate anybody that is not cool, or behaving in an uncool way:

"Che, ¿salimos esta noche?" (Dude, will we go out tonight?) "No puedo, tengo que estudiar" (I can't, I have to study) "Dale, ¡No seas ortiba!" (C'mon, don't be so uncool!)

Others I've heard: feca (café), zapi (pizza)

sillobol (bolsillo = pant pocket)

Extra interesting is how sillable-reversed versions words with normal and 'slang' meanings retain the slang meaning but lose the original.

For example, gato means cat. It's also an insult (the particulars of which escape me), but toga is just the insult.

This particular one is very interesting. "gato" does not originate from the word refering the animal, but from gatillar (triggering) that was slang for who used to pay for company (To put it in simple words). From there it evolved to several meanings, the most important one being the person that acts as gatekeeper for somebody more important (In jails and mobs).

that is what is was very, very often used to refer to the ex president Macri.

Hey, French here. Sometimes a reversed word will go so mainstream that people will feel the need to reverse it again. Going full circle.

Femme ( girl ) -> Meu-fe -> Meuf -> Feu-meuh

You guys do that as well?

hahahahaha nop, that's a good one! but we do tend to keep deforming them, and a lot of words take on a second or more meanings.

We have something like that in Italian too, in the area where I come from we call it "riocontra" (which is "contrario", ie. "opposite", with the syllables inverted) . It's probably not as widespread as verlan, but it's still pretty common among the youth of my city.

The same in argentinean Spanish. “Pelado” (bald) becomes “dolape”. What region are you from? I think I’ve heard something similar from Milanesi, but I’m not sure.

This, at least in rioplatense spanish is called "vesre", which is itself the vesre of "(al) revés", which in turn means " backwards".

It's common in all Spanish Spain places

Correct, I'm from Milan and riocontra is used almost exclusively in Milan. We have the same "pelato" -> "topela" correspondence by the way!

Where is this? Because I never encountered this thing, neither in Venice (where I was born) nor in Rome (where I live now).

Milan :)

Also funny how "riocontra" sounds like "river flowing backwards" (at least in Portuguese)

Same thing, in Serbian:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0atrova%C4%8Dki

Same exists in Croatian... vozdra was very common....

The more interesting one is when you add the letter P and the syllable after the syllable For example.... Ja sam lud (I am nuts) becomes Japa sapam lupud or Ti si štupido (you are dumb/stupid ... more used in Istria instead of glup/budala) becomes tipi sipi štupuipidopo

Growing up in Holland there is no such thing really in Dutch... there is plat Amsterdams or Bargoens ... so whenever I spent time in Croatia with family I practiced my Šatrovački :-)

Similar things in other languages!:

Greek's Podaná: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podan%C3%A1

Rioplatense Spanish's Vesre: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesre

Serbo-Croatian's Šatrovački: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0atrova%C4%8Dki

(Please let me know if I missed any.)

Here for completion but not really the same if you ask me:

English's Back Slang https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_slang and Australian "Butchers' Talk" https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/behind-that-tray...

Edits: formatting.

Bernese German has a similar thing, however they don't swap syllables, they move the initial consonant cluster to the end of the word, and add vowels, like this:

Schnure -> Ire-schnee

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattenenglisch

Yeah, lots of languages have things like this like Pig Latin and Jeringozo.

Rioplatense Spanish (Buenos Aires and surrounding areas) also has this feature:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesre

Other French slang: Javanais https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javanais

I've been living in France for more than 5 years and I have never heard of this.

Is it specific to a region in particular?

I'm French. My grand father used this form of slang with friends when he was young so they didn't get understood by others.

I've leaved in many parts of France and never heard anyone use it, probably long dead?

I am a native French speaker and I never heard javanais (grew up in Paris city).

However, I had a teacher who was always saying "Do I have to tell you that in Javanais?" (sarcastically) when we were not paying attention to what she was saying in class.

While I dont think it is specific to a region, it is probably specific to an age: verlan is quite used among late teens / young adults, while Javanais is more used by childs / young teens. I used to speak Javanais with my sisters as a way to speak without our parents understanding (hopefully!).

It is not really a "slang", but I thought it was similar and worth sharing

This is why La Javanaise has so many av sounds (though it's not javanais)

Interesting! It seems quite similar to the English-language Ubbi Dubbi, but for different purposes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubbi_dubbi

Verlan seems quite similar to Pig Latin, come to think

This also exists in slav languages - as a child secret speech. It is easier to understand than to say (both pronounce and construct the deformed word)

And yet another: Louchébem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louch%C3%A9bem

They also have special hyperabbreviated slang they use in short text messages, online chats and advertisements. Very hard to read for non-native speakers.

Isn't this similar to what is done in English?

Another one that can seems weird to english speaker:

"Comasse", which is a verlan of the last word of "Comme ça".

"Ça" is pronounced "ssa" which sounds "ass" once reverted. English peoples would understand it as "Come ass".

I’ve always imagined the inverted words written with the original spelling: « Comme aç » for « Comme ça », which adds more poetry to the word to my opinion.

They don’t talk about words inherited from SMS mistakes, but I would add « aps » (for « pas », as in « je sais aps » = « I don’t kown »).

I’m not sure ‘aps’ is coming from SMS/texting as it was used (if memory serves) in the early 90s when cellphones were very rarely used.

It’s most probably the same phenomenon as other verlan words: a mix of phonetic inversion and some influence from the writing form.

In older movies, you'll also hear it as "comme ak".

"Et la taulière... une blonde comme ac... comment qu'elle s'appelait?"

https://youtu.be/lGGI3ubLmaU?t=157

Wiktionary hints that variant is mostly southern, from occitan "coma aquò".

Ah yes, tromé (verlan for métro), ouais, and putain: the three French words I sprinkle in with my broken French the most to make it seem like I speak the language better than I actually do

It should be noted, perhaps as a warning, that sprinkling those words makes you sound like you're from the worst neighbourhood in town.

That's like saying that using "yeah" and "fuck" make you sound like you come from a bad neighborhood. Totally untrue

Verlan slang is associated with lower classes and rough neighbourhoods. If you use it in your everyday speech along with "ouais" and "putain" every other sentence (which some people do), it does not do you any favour.

Replying to a question with "ouais" is rude in French if you're not chatting with your friends.

I think "Verlan" is kind of old fashioned. It was a lot cooler when the boomers were young IMHO.

Some Verlan words are still in common use in the "banlieues" (i.e. rough neighborhoods), like saying "muff" instead of "femme", "tromé" instead of "métro", "chelou" instead of "louche", etc...

But there are many other slang words in use. A lot of borrowings from English ("cash") or Arabic ("flouz" meaning "money") are used too.

It's probably hard for an English speaking tourist to hang out in these areas. But if you want to get a "feel" for it, I would recommend watch "Spiral" which are some stereotypical "banlieues" scenes. But I suppose it's better than nothing... or going to the "four" to buy drugs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_(TV_series)

Verlan isn't old fashioned. It is in widespread use as you mention.

>A lot of borrowings from English ("cash") or Arabic ("flouz" meaning "money") are used too.

Flouze isn't a recent borrowing. It came when Algeria was still French, probably through the Army. Like toubib, caoua, chouïa etc. It's not immigrant-specific.

There are new borrowings from Arabic, and they're usually very noticeable and have strong social implications. Similar to the Spanish used by Latino-Americans in everyday English.

That's an exageration. Other than in an uptight office setting or by the employees in a refined establishment, these words (especially "ouais") are considered familiar but not rude to your interlocutor.

"tromé" might be a bit too young-sounding for general use, but nothing to do with politeness or social class. The well-off Parisian youth love to use these words.

It is certainly isn't an exaggeration. Being familiar to people you do not know is rude: You do not address a stranger with 'tu' but with 'vous', for example.

But 'ouais' is not just familiar, as is in "perfectly fine with people you know", it is lacking manners. Generations of French mothers, teachers, etc. have spent a lot of time scolding children who answered them using "ouais" instead of "oui", as another commenter mentioned. In general it is fine between friends or colleagues, though.

'Putain' is very rude outside of very familiar banter among friends and colleagues.

'tromé', and verlan in general, is quite low social class.

If people here on HN want to learn French then it is obviously useful to know these words but they should not use them. You never get into trouble for speaking properly...

I understand what you're saying, its absence denotes a level of speech that is advised in certain spheres, but describing it as "rude" would be confusing to a non-native. A stranger wouldn't just accidentally drop-in the French "haute-bourgeoisie".

Anywhere else, it is acceptable, don't get offended if someone says those words to you. I have literally heard it used in business meetings with the executives of top funds and companies.

It is not acceptable unless you know it is. Saying that using these word is perfectly acceptable is what can only confuse non-native speakers because they then might use them when they shouldn't and then don't understand why they are getting funny looks.

Language in business can be quite spicy but you don't use that language to address your local baker if you have the most basic manners (granted, many people don't).

I agree that non native speakers shouldn't use those words, just because understanding the peculiarities of when it is appropriate is quite difficult.

But those words are, broadly speaking, perfectly acceptable in many situations. Two 20-something or 30-something friends will use "ouais" (and "yeah"), "putain" (and "fuck" or "damn") and even potentially "cette meuf" (and "that dude") without any issue. You wouldn't use those in professional settings in French or in English.

> Two 20-something or 30-something friends will use "ouais" (and "yeah"), "putain" (and "fuck" or "damn") and even potentially "cette meuf" (and "that dude") without any issue

Isn't that exactly what I'm saying? Using those terms between friends (age is irrelevant and those terms are not just for the 'young') may be OK but you would not use them to even talk to a stranger in the street or in a shop if you have basic manners.

My main issue is with your use of the phrase "basic manners". This isn't a question of manners. It's like speaking Spanish in a French bakery: it's not rude, it's just not the right context. Similarly if you start vouvoyer your child, it's not "bad manners" it's just not done.

Strongly disagree. It is basic manners.

Children are taught not to say "ouais", or not to say 'tu' to adult they don't know, etc. because it is bad manners to.

If I'm asked if I want my baguette on the more crunchy side and I reply "ouais" this is bad manners.

Ouai instead of oui, is like yeah instead of yes. Putain is an interjection of surprise or anger, like when you leave your flat with the door closing behind you only to realize the keys are left inside, that's when you scream putain (fuck). These are not inverse words.

Long story short, most of everything else discussed in this thread is not appropriate. If you address women as meuf (hoe), your friendship and romantic prospects will dwindle like an ice cream under the sun.

If that's how you talk in an interview or on a date, you're out in less than 5 minutes (they may wait the end of hour to show you the door, they are not monster -unlike you-).

Come on, it's not that bad nor rare. You sound as if you never went out of Paris 16 or Neuilly.

It's rude in the same context that "yeah" is rude. So ok, there are times when it's more appropriate to answer with "yes", but there are many situations outside of chatting with my friends where I would be comfortable saying "ouais".

Also, verlan is used all the time by everyone under the age of 30. Not all of it; some terms are rarer than others and are, as you say, associated with rough neighborhoods. But it's an extremely common way of speaking.

Lol idk what your experience is but mine is that verlan has basically permeated all casual conversations among everyone under 40. I guess you'd look a bit odd if you hung around the kind of people who take pride in not using any of that language but in practice virtually everyone uses verlan in one way or another.

Also, using slang isn't as frowned upon as it can be in America. Again, idk your experience but mine is that people swear left and right in casual conversation without anyone giving them a side glance. Of course in formal contexts such as addressing strangers in the street or greeting your baker you don't want ot, but the moment familiarity sets in you can be sure swearwords are going to pop all the time.

Nah not really, I’m not native French but went to a French Lycée, and from my experience, everyone and their mother, from the banlieue to the best neighborhood in Paris, says putain and ouais in an informal setting.

If your experience is that "everyone and their mother" says "putain" I am afraid that French people will conclude that you did not stay in the best area, to say the least.

That being said, 'putain' is also used a lot in some southern areas of the country. But you should not conclude that you can safely say it as you please all over the country without people thinking less of you.

I can assure you that in the "best neighbourhood in Paris" you will get funny looks if you sprinkle your language with 'putain' and reply to questions using "ouais".

Imo the key word is informal settings, I think most people would use those but higher class people were taught when not to use them.

Ouai is slang for oui (yes). It's not classy but it's nowhere near as bad as the other words discussed here. It's like "yeah" instead of "yes" really.

Using meuf/rebeu/trome (woman, arab, tube) is similar to using hoe and nigga in English. Better not do that even in an informal setting. If you talk like that near people, let's say in a bar or in the tube or on your phone walking, people nearby will avoid you.

If you add "putain" every few sentences, you will be universally approached as a violent degenerate.

Meuf is absolutely not close to hoe (or even less nigga). Meuf is very common and just colloquial among the younger generation. Maybe the closest would be "dude" or maybe "fam": not insulting in the least but something you wouldn't use in professional settings or with your parents.

Be very careful when making extreme racial slurs. If you are not visibly and obviously a member of that same race, you are likely to receive a much more negative reaction than you expect. And that negative reaction could be quite life-threatening.

Been there, saw that.

Nobody is going to get physical because you called them meuf.

As a kid, I spent a couple of weeks living with a French family as an exchange with my French class. Prior to arriving to the (lovely) home in a south of France village I had spent some time in Paris, and picked up "ouais", mostly subconsciously, but boy, did I feel French and in the know. It took all of five minutes for the mother of the family to take that bad habit out of me.

I love that, in pure French tradition, we went as far as designing a circumvoluted spelling for this word, with a « s » at the end. Proof that we have an intuitive reflex about where to put the S, even when there is no grammar rule for new words.

Why is it a bad habit? I thought "ouais" was just like "yeah". Is it an urban/rural dialect difference?

I knew adults who didn't like children saying "yeah", I think they said it sounded lazy/disrespectful? So maybe the same thing.

I'm not familiar enough to say, but I guessed it's similar to what some other posters in the parent thread are saying: it's lazy and rude. This was also a family on the southern French almost-but-not-quite country side, and the son I was exchanging with had never even been to Paris, so it might be a metropolitan/country divide, as well.

I grew up in the Swedish countryside, and we use a slightly different vocabulary from Stockholm, even though it's not far outside. Some words sounding more dated, less or different slang, less or different curse words.

And again, I was there to learn proper French, and I guess Mme Picq wanted to make sure the French I learned was indeed proper. It made me happy to be corrected, and also her cooking made me very happy!

> ouais, and putain: the three French words I sprinkle in with my broken French the most to make it seem like I speak the language better than I actually do

Mandatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KunHko803g4

I would have thought about this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSeaDQ6sPs0

C'est pas faux

Voilà donc de quoi s'inspirait The Wire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lElf7D-An8

Oh, I think it's more than inspiration. The Wire producers are obviously guilty of plagiarism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ4pldh_pOA (nsfw).

Ha ! My Polish wife speaks a very good French with almost no accent. Learned French in school over 6 years and was very good. When she came in France, couldn't understand a word anyone was saying. All the 'chelou', 'zarb', 'relou', 'dégueulasse', 'meuf', 'flics', ... It felt like learning a whole new dirty lexicon. But since everyone uses it more or less...

That's the problem with French: everything you learn in school or listening to the news anchors will be something different from what you actually use in everyday life. So you have to re-learn it

I thought it was only French that was like this. But the English I learned in school wasn't anymore representative of the British-English (try watching 'Skins' or The Office or Extras) or Australian English (took me some time...). And then even in the US. After years of watching American shows without subtitles, first time I read 'to kill a mockingbird' or 'catcher in the rye' was a shock. So much vocabulary I didn't know... And it was only high-school level English!

That's not unique to French, nearly every language has some pretty large differences between the colloquial language and the more formal language. Arabic is particularly difficult is this regard because modern standard arabic serves as the official language, but everyday speech is done in the individual dialects. But the differences between the dialects and MSA are pretty large, to the extent that a lot of linguistics think that "arabic" should really be considered as a family of closely related languages. So the situation is akin to the governments and media of France, Spain and Italy working in Latin while people in those countries continue to speak their respective languages.

Bonus points for using extra long vowels where thinking pauses go. To me that’s as French as it gets.

Je pense que [ouaaaaaahhheeee] ...

+10 French

Similar thing with Australian butchers: https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/behind-that-tray...

The French butchers also have something a bit different : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louch%C3%A9bem

Funny that "Verlan" is itself the verlan slang for "à l'envers", which means reversed.

Interesting that this is an actual phenomenon. I recall my French friend explaining to me that "McDonald's" was shortened to "MacDo" which then (if you were in the know) was reversed to "DoMac".

Imagining Jobs getting a bit nervous about this.

A Mac wouldn’t be confused with a McDo because both are short enough that they can’t be shortened.

It is pretty old, it was already popular in the 90ies when Les Inconnus used it. Everyone who wants to appear « in » (in touch with the young) uses it, I’m not even sure it looks that cool to actual teenagers ;)

Teenagers may learn some of these words without realizing it's verlan. For example a strange/weird object can be "chelou", it means bizarre or surprising now, it has lost the semantics of the original "louche", meaning suspicious.

This has been around at least as long as the 1980s: back then I was a teenager and had an exchange visit with this kid from Paris, I remember him describing how they flipped words around to make their own slang. One that stuck in my head was "chébran", a reversal of "branché", which literally means "plugged in" or "connected" but in the era of Minitel and other early networks was used to indicate someone who was hip to current trends.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0atrova%C4%8Dki

Verlan is usually used by french people with North African origins (where Arabic is the official language)

I have always thought that these people were just reading French from right to left like you would read Arabic, giving birth to Verlan.

There are no vowels in arabic, so "bi" "ba" "bo" are just instances of the letter "b", which I thought explained why verlan reversed the words but kept the order for each "consonant+vowel" unit

I don't think so. In Argentina we have a similar thing called Vesre (re-ves).

Hardly, there are other commutative slangs that preceded verlan and African immigration, like louchébem (the slang of butchers).

And that's just in France, it's a common trope in many languages. It just happens to be much better documented in France.

Verlan has gone into common use by all strata of the general population, not just immigrants. It's been the case for 50+ years. It's much decried by the usual suspects like the Académie and whatnot but the truth is that everyone uses it.

The phenomenon is also accelerating, even the most trivial and shortest words are getting commonly reversed: là (there) -> al, pas (not) -> ap, moi/toi (me/you) -> ouam/ouat, ça (that) -> ass, bien (well) -> ienb, pied (foot) -> iep, etc. Lots of fun to be had when explaining all this stuff to other non-French speakers.

Another short one "ouf", as in "C'est ouf !" Used by everyone.

Some words are really used throughout, definitely not limited to any particular origin or age.

Every french person will understand expressions like "Ch'uis vénère" (I'm furious, from "énervé"), "Fumer de la beuh" (Smoking pot, from "herbe"). "Les keufs" (The cops, from "flics").

Consider the classic movie "Les Ripoux" (1984). "Ripou" Meaning corrupt cops, coming from "pourri" rotten.

Nepali people use a similar method for gossiping. The syllables are reversed, making it hard for people around to understand what they're saying. Only the two conversing know what they're talking about and they've done it for long enough that they can easily parse through it.

It's a hard skill to master, which is why it's easy to assume those around don't understand what's being talked about.

The people on the board of the Académie française must be upset. They're the purists, making sure there's no perversions entering the French language. But language is fluid. You can't stop the tide of change

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise

I kind of like it when absurd things like prescriptivism are as formal and organized as this. It makes them much easier to mock, deride, and rebel against.

The US by contrast has a similar level of prescriptivism around the English language, largely comprised of biases against regionalisms, speech patterns of the working class, and dialects like AAVE. But it’s enforced informally through snobbery and various other forms of social and institutional exclusion, which can be much harder to schematize and challenge.

>and rebel against

i.e. intentionally use definitions you know are confusing and then - as language is famously a single person endeavour - blaming the listener when they misunderstand. This arrangement works particularly well as a shibboleth to prevent people knowing what you're saying if they have the poor foresight to choose another language as their native tongue.

Maybe a naive question from someone with only passing familiarity, but does gender stay the same? Maybe not the best example, but does le metro stay le trome?

Verlan lervan

So, like pig Latin, but for French?

This is a new thing?

Itd be fun if they'd apply this principle of reversal to their abbreviations/acronyms as well, then the French ones will mirror the rest of Europe again. Right now:

MRI is IRM (imagerie par résonance magnétique)

LPG is GPL (Gaz liquide propane)

Etcetera...

Uhm, Italian uses mostly the same order as French (GPL Gas di Petrolio Liquefatto, for example), unless by "the rest of Europe" you mean to exclude the ones that speak romance languages.

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